


Death comes to Noviomagus Reginorum

by bunn



Category: The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Gen, Murder Mystery, Older Characters, Original Character(s), Roman Britain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 04:36:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6641671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunn/pseuds/bunn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sixty years after the Eagle of the Ninth, Cottia still lives on the farm in the Downs that she, Marcus and Esca set up together.    Britain is in confusion after four years of civil war across the Empire.  The great house of Placidus backed the wrong imperial claimant, and now young Servius Placidus, the last of a long line, is on the run from the newly-established Emperor Severus's revenge.  Then one of Severus's men is found dead....</p><p>I'm afraid Marcus and Esca are dead by this time, as you might expect, but this story does not cover their deaths.</p><p>Many thanks to Small_Hobbit for the helpful beta!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. On the Farm

Servius Placidus, the youngest of that great Roman family,  yanked at the small wooden door.  It was stuck. He had to use his good arm to give it a second pull.  Then he caught his breath in shock. 

There were men standing there in the dim storeroom, outlined dark against the pale light from the small window, a centurion in his crested helm, and two soldiers.   His heart pounded, his stomach rose in sick protest.  They had come for him, the emperor’s men. They had found him. 

Then the centurion’s head turned its crest, uncurled itself and became a black cat with a white chest, jumping down liquidly from the shelves, and the figures of the soldiers dissolved into boxes and  baskets.   He closed his eyes for a moment and took a long relieved breath.   Just imagination -- imagination and cats.  Nothing to worry about. 

He took another stack of accounts, close-written on thin birchwood slats, back to the makeshift table in his tiny, lime-washed room and began to go through them.  They made no sense.   He frowned ferociously at his wax tablet.  It didn’t help.  The numbers still would not tally.  

 The older records were close-written in a precise, military hand, and stacked neatly in order, but the more recent ones were full of scratches and scrawls in cheap, gritty-looking ink.  Placidus regretted having volunteered to bring them to order.   It was the one thing on  the farm that he knew he could do well, where his weak arm would be no hindrance.   But Jupiter!  It was such a _mess_!  

 He sorted what was probably the most recent stack into what he hoped might be date order. 

 “That’s as much as I can do on my own,” he said to the fat red-and-white cat.  The cat sat in a patch of sunlight on the bed, watching him with unblinking yellow eyes. “I’ll have to tackle the old lady if I’m going to get any sense out of these.”  The cat yawned, unimpressed.

  ***

 

The old lady sat outside, in her chair on the raised terrace looking over the small sunny Downland valley that was her own domain.  Her long silver hair hung in a thick plait down her back.  Cottia, everyone called her, although some of the records in the storeroom named her Flavia Aquila.   Her sharp, wrinkled face was animated as she spoke to the woman sitting opposite her.  

Placidus hesitated, wondering if he should duck back inside before the stranger saw him.

The visitor was a little younger than Cottia.  She had a round cheerful face with the apple cheeks of a peasant, but her improbably-red hair was caught up into a complicated style that Placidus remembered seeing women wear last time he had been in Rome. Probably it was the very latest thing, here in Britannia. The glass beads on her hair pins had clearly been carefully chosen to complement her pale blue  _ stola _ .   

 Cottia was wearing the kind of old-fashioned British dress, chequered red and yellow, that you only saw old women wearing, here in the civilised South of Britain.  But today it was held in place with a pair of red enamelled brooches in twirling dragon-shapes, and Placidus noticed a silver snake-bracelet as well as her usual gold earrings.  Clearly this visitor was a person of importance. 

 “Come and meet my old friend, Marcia,” Cottia said, noticing him before he had a chance to bob back inside without being noticed.  “Marcia’s husband is one of the Carvillii -- they hold the farm to our south, you know, and his people are one of the great families of the district.   She has come bearing all the gossip, so is even more welcome than usual.   Gossip is something we can never have too much of.  Marcia, this is... Felix.   One of my grandson’s Roman friends.  He has come to stay here for a while for his health.” 

 That last  was certainly true, Placidus thought, greeting Marcia politely, and taking a seat on the bench.  His visit to the farm truly was vital to his health.  His father, Servius Placidus the elder, had died supporting the imperial pretender Clodius Albinus.  There were standing orders across Britannia to eliminate Placidus and all his family and friends. 

  _Felix_ , he thought. _Lucky_.  Not the most dignified name for a Servius Placidus of a great senatorial family -- but an accurate one under the circumstances.

 “So, you are a friend of young Flavius?” Marcia asked, her eyes sharp with curiosity.  “I did not realise he had friends from...?” She paused enquiringly. 

 “Thrace,” Placidus said firmly.  He had had a Thracian tutor, and he was fairly sure that he knew more about the place than anyone who had lived all their life in Britain.  “I met Flavius when he was on leave, and I was staying with my cousins,” he improvised.    He had a vague idea that Cottia’s grandson was serving as a centurion in Lusitania.  

 “Flavius told Felix here all about the farm -- poor love, he must be homesick -- and so when Felix found himself unwell in Calleva, he wrote to me and I said of course he must come to stay,” Cottia added.

 “I have been doing some work on the farm accounts,” Placidus added -- there, that made him sound like he must be some dull little secretary, but it also made it clear that he wasn’t a complete invalid at least.  

 Anyone looking for him would probably know about his leg, so it was best not to mention that.  He didn’t think she would have spotted it, not from seeing him walk a few steps.  Anyway,  he had had enough solicitous enquiries after his leg and his awkward arm to last three lifetimes.  “In fact, that was why I came out just now, I have a few questions...” 

 “We will discuss them later,” Cottia said firmly.  “You have been working all morning: take a cup with us and have a rest!”

 She poured him a cup of small beer from the jug.  Placidus eyed it with  private alarm : it was murky and an odd brown colour, but he took the cup politely anyway. 

 “So, tell me all about Thrace!” said Marcia brightly and Placidus hastily racked his brains for stories that a young secretary would reasonably know and could tell a pair of elderly ladies from Britain. 

 He managed what he felt was a creditable description of the imperial city of Hadrianopolis,  with its towers and its bright boats on the three great rivers.  He improvised enthusiastically around memories of a visit he had made when he was ten, and thought he sounded quite convincing. But it was clear that Marcia had really come to talk about the people and places that she knew herself, and the talk soon turned back to the Downs.  

  
“And that girl of Senecianus’, you know the one, the girl that danced with Biccus at the autumn fair --”

 “Senovara, I think,” Cottia said

 “Senovara of course!  Anyway -- she’s pregnant and won’t tell _anyone_ who the father is.   I don’t think she even knows, myself.” 

 “Really?  You don’t think it might be Biccus?” Cottia asked.

 “Young Biccus, or Biccus the Horse?  You must mean Young Biccus, surely. “

 “I can’t imagine Biccus the Horse with any woman,” Cottia put in delicately.  

 “True, true... Anyway, everyone knows Young Biccus has a woman in Regnum and won’t look at any of the country girls now.  And anyway I’m sure he has more taste than to take up with Senovara.   _Such_ a weak chin, and she will wear green which is really such a mistake with her colouring don’t you think?”

 Cottia nodded fractionally, looking out over the valley. Marcia took this as encouragement. 

 “Such a pity because her mother was quite a beauty in her day, and much run-after.  Although, I believe she is a very talented dairy-maid, which I suppose is a blessing of a kind.  Senovara, I mean, not her mother, because the mother was from a brewing family in Regnum and I don’t believe they even had any cattle. “

 “I believe not,” Cottia confirmed, smiling slightly.

 Marcia’s headlong train of thought continued, “But here I am going on! I really came over to ask if you might be able to spare some of your chickens.”

 “Chickens? But I thought you had all those big Gaulish birds with the...”  Cottia waved her hands, conveying an impression of a puffed up crown of feathers. 

 “Well, we did, and very fine they looked, but something took one,  and after a while another and another and in the end we lost six, and now the rest have stopped laying, or at any rate, they aren’t laying nearly enough. We just aren’t getting enough eggs.” 

 “A fox?” Placidus asked, feeling that he should contribute something to the conversation. 

 “Nasty things! ” said Marcia, wrinkling her nose, “So smelly!  And yes, such a terrible menace to the  hens.   We thought it was perhaps a dog at first, but the new fence didn’t stop it - and then we found some red hairs, so it is certainly a fox.”

 “We have got a couple of fox-dogs now and the men have been rushing about madly waving spears in all directions,  so I’m sure they’ll catch it soon. In the meanwhile, I’ve given orders that the boy must be much more careful about making quite sure to shut them up before dusk.  I don’t think we will  lose any more.”

 “They’re clever beasts,” Cottia said. “How odd that one should come right into your farmyard at this time of year.  The woods are full of birds’ nests and small squeaking things.” 

 “A fox with expensive tastes, perhaps?   Anyway,  I wondered if you might be able to spare a few of your hens, Cottia?  I know they have a fine reputation for standing up for themselves and laying despite the weather.  Perhaps half a dozen, in exchange for some of our hay?”

 “The chickens are my great-granddaughter’s charges,” Cottia said, “We had best have a word with her.  Felix, have you seen Cara?  She was in the barn a little while ago.” 

 Placidus seized the opportunity to escape. “I’ll go and look,” he offered. 

 Andecara was not in the barn.  She was in the paddock behind it, perched high on a prancing grey colt that appeared to be as excitable as he was large.  Wisps of red-amber hair which had escaped the plait that bounced on her back formed a halo around her freckled face, which wore an expression of intense concentration. 

Placidus looked at them with caution. Neither girl nor horse looked particularly safe to approach.   

 Cara wheeled the colt, and brought him trampling and snorting up to the gate. 

 “Were you looking for me?”  she asked coolly.  Placidus was not sure what she thought of his sudden appearance as a guest at the farm.  The grandson, Flavius, must be the official owner of the place, and if this was the old lady’s great granddaughter, then she must be Flavius’s  daughter, and might reasonably look askance at someone whose very presence put the place at risk.    

 But no, Flavius was not married, he was sure someone had said, and besides, was Flavius old enough to have an almost-grown daughter?  This was his niece, perhaps.    But everyone seemed to refer to the farm, and everything on it, as belonging to the lady Cottia. 

 “Your great grandmother wants to talk to you about some chickens for the Lady Marcia,”  he told her.  “They are waiting for you at the front of the villa, where the old lady sits in her chair.”

 “What!”  her eyes went wide in alarm.  “I can’t see Marcia Carvilia like this!  I’d never hear the last of it!”  She slid from the horse’s back and waved expressively at her clothes. 

 The short simple tunic that laid bare her legs and arms was rather pleasing, Placidus thought,  even if it was sweaty and stained with grassy horse-slobber. But he had to admit that the expensively-dressed  Marcia was unlikely to see it  in quite the same way.   

 “She said she wants some chickens to replace those that were taken by a fox,” he explained.  “She offered hay in exchange.”  

 “Hay for chickens!” Andecara was indignant.   “It would have to be a great deal of hay to be worth exchanging for chickens.” 

 “I think that was what your great grandmother wanted you to say,” Placidus said, amused.  He had decided that he liked Andecara, although he was not sure she returned the compliment.   “Hay was being sold at a denarius for three pounds last time it is mentioned in the accounts.  Chickens would be, what, forty the brace?  And surely the farm produces more than enough hay?” 

 “We use a good deal of it in the winter, for the horses.  Rearing horses for riding doesn’t come cheap.  But six chickens! Six! ”

 “What do you think she should offer?”  

 “Piglets” Andecara said instantly.  “Piglets and the promise of some of their cider, later in the year.  They have good orchards, the Carvillii.”

 “Not cloth? You’re short of weavers. There’s a stack of wool on the books that’s not been woven, spun or sold for three years.  You could trade that with the chickens for finished work.”

 “We can weave what we need.  Who do you think we are, buying cloth!  We aren’t all rich and idle!”

 Placidus was taken aback and a little hurt. “You don’t seem to be spending much time spinning,” he observed. 

 Andecara’s face went bright pink, and Placidus realised that mentioning the large bales of unspun wool might have been a little tactless. Virtuous women were supposed to be enthusiastic spinners, after all. 

  “We don’t need the cloth!” she exclaimed.  “Oh, I can’t stand here talking.  I must get changed...”   She looked at the horse, clearly wondering what to do with it.  Placidus looked at its arched neck and mischievous eye, and did not volunteer to take it from her.  But perhaps there was another way. 

 “You are busy.  Would you like me to tell Marcia that you would prefer piglets and cider?  How many piglets, would you say? ” 

 She looked taken aback.  “Well, I suppose...  I ought to rub him down really, not just leave him standing here sweaty.  Perhaps three?  Three for six chickens would be a very good price.  Or two, and a couple of jugs of cider, maybe?”  

 “Three.  Right.  Let me see what I can do,” he said resolutely. 

 Negotiating for piglets was not something he had ever done before, but fortunately it could be done without actually having to handle either piglets or chickens. Placidus was fairly sure he would not be much good at that.  

 Whereas flattering and persuading people who were not quite as Roman as they would like to be thought?  Well, that was something that the only son of the Legate of the Twentieth had been brought up to from his earliest days. 

 


	2. The Missing Chickens

Marcia set off down the valley road, with a wicker basket full of shuffling, cackling little black hens loaded onto the back of her mule-cart, where her slave could keep an eye on them, leaving behind her the promise that a man would come up presently with the piglets.  Cottia watched her go, looking thoughtful.

“Well done, young Placidus - no, Felix!  I must get used to calling you Felix. You don’t mind?”  and she fixed him suddenly with a very sharp glance.  
   
“Not at all,” said Placidus honestly.  “It seems a most appropriate name.  And anyway, I owe you my life; I can hardly complain.”

“Hmph.  How very unlike your great grandfather you are.”  

Placidus opened his mouth in confusion, trying to think how best to apologise for his great grandfather, a man that he had never met.  

“Four piglets for six chickens!” Cottia chuckled drily.  “And I thought Marcia a shrewd woman!  No wonder you Romans rule the world.  I’m glad you didn’t bargain like that the day you came here to buy a horse!”

“Should I have done? Surely my fine Nini was worth every penny.  Nobody wants to think they are riding a cheap horse. ”  Placidus smiled at her, but part of him was wondering if he had indeed bargained harder that day, if she would still have given him refuge.    
His thoughts carried him back to that desperate chill February morning when the word had come in  that his father was dead.  That the Emperor Albinus had taken the last desperate throw of the dice, and had lost. When he first realised that the world as he knew it had ended.

He had not waited for an official messenger.  He had taken Nini, fresh from his paddock and plastered in mud to make him unrecognisable, and come riding up through the hills, wearing a hideous tunic bought hurriedly from the stable-boy.  Why had Cottia given him refuge?  Would driving a hard bargain when he had bought the horse have been enough to change her mind?   Better not to ask.

“I had wondered whether to throw the bales of wool from the store-room into the trade and ask for finished cloth, but Andecara thought not,” Placidus told her, instead.  

“Oh, poor Cara!  That wool is her guilty secret.  She has this ridiculous idea that she should spin and weave, like a good dutiful Roman lady!”  

 Cottia seemed to find this a hilarious idea, although Placidus could not see anything very funny about it.

 “Her spirit is Iceni, like mine,  and it drags her away from her spindle and out to the horses...”Cottia explained.  “And why not, after all?   Cara will never be a talented spinster, but she has an excellent eye for a horse.  She takes after our side of the family.   I’m sure the farm takes more profit from a well-trained pony than from a length of lumpy homespun.”

This was certainly true. “I only hope the chickens don’t get eaten by the fox before you get the piglets,” Placidus said.

Cottia frowned, causing her forehead to crease into an even more complex nest of wrinkles.    “This fox of Marcia’s is a most unlikely beast,” she said. “Taking just the one hen each time, and leave the rest, and then come again not the next night, but a week later?   That is not like any fox I have ever seen.”

“Does it matter?” Placidus asked, perplexed.

“Curiosity is one of the privileges of extreme old age” Cottia told him smiling. “And I do enjoy a puzzle.”  

“A puzzle?  Oh, you think that if is not a fox taking the chickens then it must be... something else.  A thief?”  

“Perhaps.  Young Senovara was telling me...”

 “Senovara - the green girl with the weak chin that Marcia spoke of?”  

“Yes.  Marcia can be rather unkind, I’m afraid.  She has a good heart, does young Senovara, and more than that, she notices things.  She thinks there is someone living over on the far side of our cherry woods. I didn’t like to mention it to Marcia, but I wonder.”

 Cottia waved a hand towards the long sweep of trees that ran down the valley side almost to the stream. Placidus supposed they must be cherry trees.

“Those are your woods?”

“They are.  We cleared much of the land, when we first came here, but the cherrywood seemed worth keeping.  We pasture the pigs there,  in the autumn, when we have pigs.  Which we will this autumn, thanks to you!”

“If someone is staying there and is making a habit of stealing chickens, that will not do.  That will not do at all .  None of our chickens have been taken though... perhaps it is unjust of me, to blame this person Senovara thinks she saw.  But I would very much like to know who it is, and what they are up to.  I do not think anyone from the nearby farms is a likely chicken-thief.”

“I could ride over into the woods and take a look?” Placidus suggested tentatively.  The thought of a break from the books was tempting, and the bright spring morning and the green swell of the downland valley was hard to resist.

“You could indeed”  Cottia quirked the corner of her mouth into a smile that broke her face up into a myriad complicated wrinkles  above her pointed chin.  “The books have been gathering dust and cobwebs all this long time.  They will not miss you for a little while.”

 “I think they have been missing any attention at all for far too long,” Placidus said, pulling his chin down and trying for the reproving expression that he remembered his father using so effectively.  Cottia waved her hand, dismissively, so he tried again. .

 “Keeping records is important. How can you know if the farm is making enough to pay your workers, or if you can afford to buy new stock?”

“Oh, it is all in my head”, Cottia said, tapping her temple with an expansive gesture.  “I have a good idea of what I have, here and there.”

 Placidus felt deflated. “So why have I spent all this time rummaging through dusty stacks of accounts?” he asked plaintively.

Cottia screwed up her face into a mass of tangled wrinkles, and looked away for a long moment, away over the valley.  Then she glanced back at him sideways, slyly, like an old, old fox, caught raiding the hen run.

 “If you were like our young Flavius, I’d not have said anything about the books to you at all.  He’s young and foolish. Full of ideals, my dear Flavius.  Everything is either the light of the midday sun, or blackest night to him.  And besides, I don’t want my Flavius worrying about his grannie.  

But you - you’re quite different. “ she said, and she fixed Placidus with bright amber eyes that were suddenly very present and observing.  “I’ve known a few like you, though mostly not well...   You’re born to coin and influence.  You learned to reckon the cost of things before you could walk.  Your kind are not so much for dark and light, you can see the twilight...  So I’ll tell you, though I’d take it kindly if you would not mention it to anyone.”

“In truth, the numbers and all the business of keeping the records of the farm - well  I can't keep track of them at all. I never have done. We have enough -- I think we have enough -- from selling the yearling ponies to pay our people around the farm.   They take most of their payment in food and clothes and housing anyway.    But more than that....   I cannot keep a hold on the numbers.

 “With people and animals, I know where I am, I can puzzle them out well enough.   But numbers - no.  I have no talent for making them line up, all in their neat rows.  They won’t march to my tune.  That was never the kind of thing I was good at.

“So if you’ll help me there, I’m  grateful -- truly I am.”

“I’d do it anyway,” Placidus assured her, and he felt his cheeks blushing embarrassingly.  “I know it’s a risk for you to have me here. And I’m not much use for anything else.”

“Well then,” Cottia smiled at him.  “All is well.   But the tallies can wait another day. They’ve most of them waited years already!  Go and ride down to the other side of the cherry woods.  Come back and tell me what you find.  I wish I could go with you, but these old bones don’t suit riding now.

Placidus saddled Nini, feeling rather pleased that he had managed to get all the tack in the right places.   He had never had to get a horse ready for riding before he came to the farm: slaves and stable-hands had seen to all that.

Yet here, everyone expected him to be able to do it for himself, without question.  It was a little worrying, he thought, pulling cautiously at a cheekpiece.     Nini rolled a gentle dark eye, and blew softly in his ear. He, like everyone else, seemed to have no doubts about Placidus’s abilities as a groom.

It made a change from Father, anyway.   Father had never really believed he could do anything for himself, anyway.  Poor Father.  They had never been close, yet the stern presence had always been there, his shadow looming large in the background of his son’s life,  the ultimate authority on all things. 

It was hard to believe that Father was gone forever.  No more avoiding the too deliberate look away from the bad leg, no more ill concealed annoyance if his son’s foot dragged.  No more being treated as a boy, when he was old enough to be counted as a man.    
But no-one to turn to. No protection. No money, save the little he had managed to bring with him.  But there was no point in dwelling on that.  

Placidus shrugged to himself, and led the horse over to the old stump that served for a mounting block.  You never knew what luck the day would bring : either he had got this girth right, or he would fall off Nini and break his head.  There was only one way to find out.

Across the bright valley, a small wind was stirring the little green flowerheads of the grass. There was a scent of the sea to the air, behind the green growing smell of spring.  

 Nini had been chosen for his smooth pace and even temper, but he arched his long neck and picked up his hooves almost as proudly as Andecara's colt, as they cantered up the steep green valley side with the sun on their backs.  The Empire and its politics and armies seemed far away, almost unimportant on a day when the grass was green and the larks all above him singing.

From the terrace, old Cottia watched them go, boy and horse together in the spring wind, and she smiled to herself.   He was beautiful, that young man, with his dark curls and regular Greek features, and half the charm of him was that he didn’t know it.    

He rode as if he was terrified of falling off, of course. Clinging to the horse like a frightened kitten.  But time and practice would mend that.

 “Did you ever see a lad with so much money and had so little fun before?” she asked the old brindled dog dozing by her chair.  It lifted its grey muzzle lazily, and she narrowed her eyes against the spring sunshine, rubbing his ears.   “Young Flavius will be furious when he finds out.  It’s bound to bring trouble, he’ll say.   But I’ve never been one to shy away from trouble...   Marcus used to say I went looking for it.  But I don’t have to look.  It comes looking for me. ”

Her smile widened, and once more she looked very much like a fox, a wary wicked old fox, smelling the scent of chickens.

***

Placidus could see nothing unusual about the woods when he reached them.  It was pleasant in the sunshine, and the woods seemed dim and empty, so he turned Nini and rode along the green close-grazed slope at the edge of the trees, peering into the wood.

He was not sure quite what he was looking for -- chicken feathers? Smoke?   The ground was firm under Nini’s hooves, and there seemed little chance of footprints.   

Far away behind him he could hear sheep bleating, and high overhead, larks were singing, but he could hear no human voice, not until he rode all the way to the corner where the woods trailed away into open downland, and he looked down into the next valley.  There was a farm there --presumably Marcia’s home.  In the fields, men and women were calling to one another as they moved cattle.

Somewhat reluctantly, he dismounted and tethered Nini to a tree and ducked under the branches into the dim green shade of the wood itself.  Golden dapples danced on the brown leaves of the floor between the trees.  Placidus walked on  warily, making sure to keep a careful eye on where he had left Nini.   There seemed to be a path of a kind here - made by deer, or by people?  Placidus was no hunter, but he recognised the delicate mark of a pointed hoof. He followed the path anyway.  There was a faint smell of smoke on the air, but it was hard to tell if it came from a fire nearby or had drifted across from a distant farm.  Placidus sniffed hopefully.

The thick bulk of a holly tree loomed ahead, dark and dense beside the paler green of the cherry leaves.  Something about it looked oddly lopsided.  Surely the thick branching foliage had been cut back on one side?  Yes, there was a ragged hole where some of the bushy lower branches had been torn away.  Placidus ducked through, cautiously.  Inside the encircling branches of the great holly tree, the ground had been swept clear of the sharp fallen leaves.  

Branches had been propped up against the great grey trunk to make a low shelter, roughly thatched with twigs and moss.    Outside it, charcoal was smouldering under a small pile of grey ash: there was only the faintest wisp of smoke, but Placidus could feel the heat coming off it as he walked past.    This must be the home of the suspected chicken thief!   But where was he?

It occurred to him that he was alone and well out of sight of the farm, with no weapon, not so much as a stick.  Someone who stole chickens was a criminal,  might not be beyond violence.   Father would have said that coming here was a foolish risk.  It was tempting to make off quickly, back to Nini and back to the farm.  Leave before anyone - anything that might be hiding in these quiet and empty woods could reveal itself.

But all his caution had not kept Father safe from harm.  And what sort of figure would he cut before the old lady, if he came back with news of this little hut but had to admit he had not looked inside it?   She had taken a much greater risk when she took him in.

Placidus stepped over to the shelter and cautiously peered between logs into the low doorway.   Someone was huddled inside on the dirt floor, a bundle  of dirty rags,  a pair of wide frightened eyes in a thin face.  The skin on one side of the face was red and blotchy.

“Who are you? What are you doing in these woods?”  he asked.   Uncertainty lent his voice an unintended raw edge of arrogance.   There was no reply: the wide eyes watched him, speechless.

Placidus raked his hand through his curly dark hair in frustration.  At least it seemed unlikely this frightened bundle would resort to violence, and it was obviously smaller than he was.   Placidus was used to feeling small and weak: it was odd to find himself looming menacingly over someone.

“Come on,” he said, trying for a calm pleasant tone. “Nobody wants to hurt you.  The lady that owns the woods asked me to come over and find out who is living here. What’s your name?”

“I’m not doing any harm,” A higher voice than Placidus had expected.  The dirty bundle of rags was a woman.

“No, no, of course not,” Placidus said, leaving aside the matter of the missing chickens for the moment.  “But what are you doing here?  What’s your name?”

“Sualina, lord” she muttered and looked away, evasive.   “I come up from Venta.    I used to be slave at the brickworks there, you know it?”  Placidus shook his head in a way that he hoped looked encouraging.

“They gave me my freedom, see?” and she went scrabbling into the back of the lean-to shelter, then emerged with a dirty scrap of leather,  “ There weren’t enough work for all the slaves, they said, and I was... oldest.”  Ugliest, too, Placidus added mentally. The scabbed red skin was unpleasant to the eye, and she smelled.

“I’ve got my documents, all proper, see?” She thrust the scrap into his hand, looking at him hopefully.  He unfolded it reflexively, and saw that it was indeed marked up and signed as a formal manumission document, despite its dismal appearance.

“They didn’t help you find anywhere else to stay?” Placidus said, taken aback.

“No sir.   I always used to look up, up into the hills.  I grew up there, somewhere up in the green hills, when I was very little.  I thought, one day I’ll go back up there, up in the trees, up near the sky.   So I walked up and away from Venta.”  She looked down suddenly “Do I have to go now?”

“I...” Placidus was caught in indecision.  He was privately appalled that whoever was the owner of this nasty little provincial brickworks had turfed out its oldest slave to beg, without any regard for their responsibility for her.  You heard of such things,  of course, but it was not the way to hold a place as a respectable citizen.  

On the other hand - was this woman honest?  Perhaps the brickworks had had good reason for their decision, quite apart from not wanting to look at her.  But letting her loose to steal chickens from honest farmers was thoroughly irresponsible.

“How have you found things to eat?” he asked, carefully.  “It must be hard for you, living here all alone.”

She looked sideways again, grey eyes cast down in a thin smudged face, and did not answer.  Placidus waited. The silence became awkward, but he kept his eyes on her face.  Most people could not bear a waiting silence, father used to say. They’d speak just to fill the empty air with words.

“Roots” she muttered, evasively.  “Roots and birds’ eggs and leaves”.  She sounded unconvinced and unconvincing.  Placidus did not believe a word of it.  

“I think you had best come with me,” he told her, trying to sound firm.  “Come and tell the owner of these woods what you are doing here and she can decide if she is happy for you to stay.”

Sualina’s eyes flicked around the holly-clearing like those of a little animal looking for escape.

“She won’t hurt you.  But you must be quite honest if you want her to let you stay here.”  That sounded rather pompous, he thought. But at least she seemed to be willing to do as she was told.   He would have felt such a fool if she had run off into the woods.

It took a while to get back to the farm.  Sualina had never ridden a horse, she said, and Placidus did not like the idea of riding double with her on Nini anyway, so they both walked.  It was a longer walk than he was used to, and he was tired by the time they got back to the farmhouse.

They found Cottia in the dairy with Vinna the dairymaid, checking the trays of cloth-covered cheeses. The two women shooed Placidus and his charge out at once, lest they should bring dust and dirt into the small clean room that Vinna kept scrubbed with vinegar.   

Sitting on her chair on the terrace once more, with a humble supplicant before her, Cottia looked even more queenly than usual.   

Sualina clearly thought so.  She had been reluctant enough to explain herself to Placidus, but under stern questioning from Cottia, she shuffled and muttered and soon broke down entirely and confessed to the theft of all six of Marcia’s fine Gaulish hens.

“And did you also plant the fox-hairs that they found in the hen-run?” Cottia asked.  Sualina shuffled her feet and nodded.

“Now that was a clever touch, for a city woman,” Cottia observed, her amber eyes narrowed among their nest of wrinkles. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“I saw the fox running over the hill, one night.  She had a rat, and I, I didn’t have anything to eat.  So I thought, if I took the hen, it would be just like the fox took it really.  If I left the hairs, they’d look for her, not me.”

Cottia’s eyebrows went up in considerable surprise.  “Hmph!  I wouldn’t put it that way, if I were you.  That will sound very much like witchcraft, to the people around here.  That’s something to learn about the country, Sualina.  It may look quiet compared to town, but surprisingly often, there’s someone watching.   And if they can possibly take something the wrong way, then they will.”

“People‘re  like that in the town too.” Sualina volunteered, to Placidus’s surprise.

“So what should we do with you? You cannot continue to live on my land and dine on my neighbours’ chickens.  I could hand you over to Marcia.  She would no doubt have you beaten.  But I expect you would move on to some other farm afterwards, which would be most unfair to our neighbours.”

Sualina looked at her feet silently.  It was clear that she would accept whatever decision Cottia made without discussion or defense.  Placidus found himself revolted by her passive acceptance of whatever fate should be handed to her.  She was so utterly useless.  It was distasteful.  

He was so overwhelmed with it that somehow he found himself speaking on her behalf.   

“She was a slave owned by a brickworks,  down in Noviomagus Reginorum: here’s the manumission, such as it is.”  He handed her the dirty scrap of leather.  He thought it looked most unlikely to have the full force of a legal document.

“It sounds as if they decided she was eating more than she was worth, so they turfed her out with nothing.  She told me that she was a child somewhere up here once, before she was sold. She came here because she wanted to go home.”

Somehow, this seemed to be the right thing to say.  Cottia’s stern wrinkled face softened.

“I suppose we can put the word out, to see if we can find any of your kinsfolk. You came from somewhere near here, then? What is your kin-name?”

“I... I don’t remember.  I was only little,” Sualina muttered.

“Well, someone may remember you anyway.  Country people have long memories, and we don’t move around much.  Do you have no children?”

“Two of ‘em born dead, two died in the plague.  The first plague, that was.  My eldest boy was eight. ”

“Mine was thirty-four,” Cottia said softly  “Still too young. Always too young, a son that dies before his mother.”  Placidus wondered about that lost son: a military man, surely, like his father.  Cottia had talked a little of her husband, the retired centurion of the Second, who had founded the farm, but nobody had mentioned the son before.

” And you are how old? Sixty years, perhaps?”

“Fifty-six” the woman said, dismally.

“Fifty-six.   So you would have been sold long before the plague.  It may well be that the ranks of your relatives are thinner now, and those who are left may be well-pleased to have you back again.

“In the meanwhile...”  She looked hard at Sualina, a long measured, considering look.  “If you promise not to take anything without asking for it first, well... we have been shorthanded on the farm for years, ever since the plague.  If you sleep in the room behind the byre, and help about the place, we’ll feed you until you have earned enough to pay Marcia back for her six chickens.   After that, we’ll see.

Sualina just blinked at her.   

“I’ll expect you to clean out the room.  Then from tomorrow you can spin, and perhaps... hmm yes, you can help clean out the chickens.  Can you do that?”

“But I’m free now.”  Sualina said, her grey eyes blinking vacantly.

“Yes, “Cottia said, impatiently.  “I will have no slaves here.  I am offering you paid work. You can choose to stay or go as you wish - once you have paid what you owe for the chickens.”

This seemed to get through to her, although to Placidus’s mind, Sualina did not show the kind of gratitude he had expected in response to such remarkable generosity.

“Yes, lady.  Thank you lady.”

“You’ll need to take a wash first, mind,” Cottia told her sharply.  “But perhaps... Felix, if you wouldn’t mind, could you take her to the kitchen, make sure she has some bread and milk.  She’ll fall over, else.  After that, you can  point her down to the millpond.  I’ll  get Hunno to cart up the straw for the bed.  I doubt she can push a barrow. ”

Startled, Placidus looked at the woman again.  It was true, she did seem rather unsteady on her legs.  It had not occurred to him to ask when she had last eaten.

Sualina ate the bread with enormous care, eating every crumb and flake of crust with cautious care, not to miss a single tiny fleck of food.  She savored the cup of milk, drinking it sip by sip.

Placidus watched her eat with a feeling of faint horror.  He had lived amid slaves all his life, of course, but they had been slaves who were provided for as part of the household.

It had not occurred to him that someone who was not a slave any more might starve, simply because it was no longer anyone’s job to provide them with food.    

That was not how things were supposed to be.   The head of the family was supposed to take care of all his dependants, even the least of them.   It was wrong and disconcerting that anyone should end up reliant on the charity of a complete stranger like this.

But that was exactly his own situation, too.   If Cottia had been the kind of person who considered bad luck to be contagious, he’d be dead already.  


	3. From the Palace to the Marketplace

 In one wing of the great golden Domus Picta, with its long white colonnades and delicate mosaic floors,  its painted plaster walls and its neat formal gardens, trimmed endlessly by a silent self-effacing army of slaves, Centurion Crispus was having a very bad day.

 “He can’t have completely vanished,” he said to Optio Bellinus as they stood surveying the large elegant main sitting room of the white-walled apartment, the one with the painting of Venus on the wall.  Venus herself was trim and neat still, poised with her face half turned, all perfect pink flesh against a clear blue sky - but the rest of the apartment was disordered.  The bed, half-visible in the doorway,  had been overturned, the cupboards opened and everything inside dragged out onto the floor.  

 “ A patrician boy, alone and lame?  Anywhere outside the palace he would stand out like a gold sequin in a bucket of dried peas.”

 “Well,” said the Optio, weightily, hooking his thumbs into his belt, “He’s not in the palace.  I’d bet a month’s pay on that. This place is a warren, I’ll grant you, but if he was here, we’d have spotted him by now.”  

 “What about his slaves? ” Crispus asked.  

 “No personal slaves here in Britain, not with the boy: I checked the palace records as well as asking the chamberlain,” the Optio told him.  

 “No slaves?  Surely that can’t be right?  The father had a household -  they all went with him to Gaul so far as I can make out from the records from Lugdunum. They were all confiscated and sold off in Gaul after the battle, of course. So, thankfully, they are not our problem.  But you are telling me that the boy had no slaves at all, in a smart apartment like this?  Who cleaned the place and kept his wardrobe?”

 “According to the majordomo, his personal slave died of the stomach sickness a month or so ago - presumably he hadn’t yet been replaced.  But the place is swarming with palace slaves - they looked after his apartment and the stables too.  They all belong to the governor.  Working on a rota, apparently,” the Optio told him.  “Maybe the father didn’t think much of him, what with him being lame and all?”

 “Nice apartment, good furniture, all those expensive clothes,  his own horse...”  he paused and made a note; “what happened to the horse? “ it said.

  “But no, I don’t think this was a son that the Legate  wished had been left out for the wolves.  In any case,  he’s on the list.  The palace slaves will all have to be questioned; everyone who worked in this wing,” Crispus told him gloomily.

 The Optio nodded, his mouth turning down at the corners in disgust.  Neither of them cared much for the business of  interrogating terrified slaves under torture, but it came with the job.  

 “Do them at the end?” the Optio suggested.   

 “There are... ten more on the list,” Crispus said running his finger down the thin wooden slats that bore a long, neatly inked list of names; the names of traitors and their families who had been judged important enough supporters of the dead and defeated Governor of Britannia that they must be arrested.

 “Probably all used the palace slaves, you think?”

 “Did the majordomo not tell you?  You’d best go and check.  We’ll leave young Servius Placidus on the to do list for now.  He’s already on the wanted list at the ports, so he won’t be leaving the province, and with a bit of luck he’ll turn up next week in Londinium or somewhere.”  He made another note on the wax tablet.

 “Have you got all his assets listed?  Good.   We’d best press on then and talk to ... Mummius Sisenna, uncle of Mummius Secundinus.  Secundinus has been put to death already, it seems, and supposedly Sisenna is here waiting for us to deal with him one way or another.  Let’s hope he says the right things.”

 The Optio looked at him curiously.  “You  really mean that, don’t you?” he asked, his long eyes narrowed in interest.  “You aren’t interested in the reward, or the bribes.  You want them not to be traitors.”

 Crispus returned his look, his face blank and innocent.  “Don’t you Optio?” he said, with just a hint of emphasis on the last word.  “On to Mummius Sisenna then.”

 

***

 

Within the wide timber palisades  and earth-banked walls of Noviomagus Reginorum, the streets were empty after dark, unless it had been a market day or a festival.  

 Today it was neither, and the low heavy clouds of April in Britannia brought the nightfall creeping close to the grey afternoon.  The wet walls reflected what little light there was, but most of the windows were shuttered.  Not many of the citizens of Regnum were out and about on such a dismal evening, not if they had any excuse to be inside.   

 The auxiliaries on the city gates saw Centurion Crispus make his weary way back from the Palace, alone.  His men had returned earlier, but in the week the investigators had been here in the town,  the Centurion had often returned after the rest.  He passed the oil lamps at the gate with a vague wave of acknowledgement,  and headed along the paved road back towards the house that the local council of magistrates had hastily made available for the new emperor’s investigator.   

 The light was going, and the mizzle fell quietly but persistently, somewhere between fog and rain.  There was nobody to see the shadow in the doorway as it stepped into the street.  Nobody to see Crispus’s body fall.

 

 ***

 

Alone in the dark that night, Cottia faced her dead. Her chin raised defiantly, she looked from face to face of all her beloved ghosts.  Her husband, so long gone. Her son, the first Flavius, dead and gone far too soon.

“I can’t hand him over, Marcus.  He’s just a boy.”

The ghost of Marcus gave her that look she still remembered, the half-incredulous smile that said, “what on earth has Cottia done now?” His face had faded in her memory, apart from the distinctive shape of that jutting nose, but she could still remember the smile.

“He’s an enemy of the Emperor,” ghost-Marcus said to her. “You can’t go against all the power of the Emperor of Rome himself. ”

“Pff!  That Severus is Emperor only because he grabbed faster and harder than all the others.  He’s not like good old Hadrian or Aurelius.  And by all accounts he’s got enough to do fighting the Parthians.  What’s the harm in letting the boy vanish here into the hills?”

“You’ll destroy everything we built here,” Flavius said angrily.  “What if they come looking?  They’ll take the farm when they find him here.”   

Dear Flavius, who had worked so hard to help clear the scrub from the sheep-pastures when he had only a boy’s strength to give to the task, who had thrown his intense energy into building the first barn.   You could still see an echo of Flavius in Andecara, sometimes.   

 “It’s true I’m gambling.  But I think my horse is a strong one.  And you know, I was always lucky with my bets. Anyway, what if they do come?  He doesn’t look much like a Legate’s son in that get-up.  And he told a lovely lie to Marcia about coming from Thrace, she swallowed every word of it.”

 “There must be men who’d recognise him.  He doesn’t speak or look like a farm-hand.”  

 “Well, who’s to say I knew who he was?”  Cottia told them defiantly. “He could be anyone.”

 “He could be anyone.” Marcus said, and that smile was still there “ And yet, he isn’t.  We were none of us overly fond of the tribune Placidus, when he first came to Britain when we were all young.”

 “He’s not his great grandfather. Can’t blame him for what his ancestors did.  For that matter, my own ancestors burned Londinium to a crisp and hung up Roman women along the river like laundry.”

 “Yet if they come, you’d simply let them take him, and pretend you had no idea who he was?”  Marcus said, and those black eyebrows had twitched up incredulously over the strong nose, and yes, perhaps she could see his face after all.  

 She chuckled.   “Well, perhaps not.  And I don’t for a minute think you would have done either, Marcus.   They killed the Governor Albinus’s poor sons, you know, even though they were too young even to be playing with wooden swords. And this one is lame, too.  I remember your soft heart too well. ”

 “Children do grow up though.  That’s why they killed Albinus’s sons: not for what they had done, but for what they might do in future.  What if this Placidus decides he wants to take up where his father left off?  What will you do then?”

 “Oh ... oh shush,” Cottia told him.  “That’s the trouble with talking to ghosts. They only ask questions that can’t be answered.  I’m going to sleep.  It’s market day tomorrow, after all.”

 “Take care, Cottia,” Marcus said gently, turning to leave her.  Flavius had gone already.

 

***

 

They found Centurion Crispus lying soaked and cold in the gutter in the first dim red light of dawn. Market day began early in Noviomagus Reginorum.

The local magistrate, Longus, arrived very shortly after the body was found, at a run, with Crispus’s Optio Bellinus close at his heels.  The Optio went down on one knee on the wet ground to  feel for signs of life.

“Any sign?” Longus asked.  There was an edge of desperation in his voice.  Crispus had been the new emperor’s man.  His death would certainly attract unwanted attention.  Longus, a city magistrate from one of Brittannia’s lesser cities, had been thankful to learn that he was not important enough to be of interest to the centurion, not worth the trouble of replacing.

But he was still associated with the old order. The memory of that dinner he had attended at the invitation of the old Governor haunted the back of Longus’s mind. It was unfair, the way such an honour could turn sour and suddenly become a dangerous secret.

Optio Bellinus shook his head.  “Dead for hours, sir, and cold.” His voice was cold too, Longus thought. As if he was already deciding that Longus was somehow to blame.  

 “Was he...?  I mean, did he die of...”  Surely it was too much to hope that the dratted man had fallen down in a fit and died of natural causes.

 “Murdered.”  The optio gently slid his hand out from cradling the dead man’s head and held it up.  The reddish smear of dark, clotted blood was unmistakable.

 Already, men were setting up market stalls around the open paved space of the forum, just down the street from where they stood.  The first mule cart came rumbling through the gates to the East of the town, loaded with bread, golden pies and baskets of eggs.  It came up the street towards them, rattling past the gutter where the body lay, leaving the warm yeasty smell of fresh-baked bread behind it.  Echoing round the corner from the south-gate, Longus could hear the trundling sound of the first of the handcarts, loaded with willow baskets full of freshly-landed fish from the quayside.  

 If the body was left here any longer, they would soon be surrounded by curious crowds coming in to the market.  Who knew what might be said then?  Already there was a slave loitering across the road, peering curiously to see what had got the Magistrate out of bed so early.

 He gestured to the freedman who had first run to fetch him, and gestured to another of his clients he’d spotted passing on the way to the forum.

 “Move this body to the third house on the Street of the Lion,” he ordered.  “I take it that is not a problem, Optio?  We can’t leave him here.  There’ll be a mob.  It’s not seemly. ”

 Optio Bellinus’s mouth thinned disapprovingly, but he looked around at the streets, becoming busier as the morning sun began to steam the water from the roads and walls, and nodded.

 The men were shuffling up North Street, carrying the heavy body between them up  towards the turning that led to the Street of the Lion, when a light wickerwork benna carriage, pulled by a single stout pony, came rattling down the road towards them.  They stepped aside to let it pass, but instead it pulled up and halted just ahead of them.

 Longus looked up, and to his frustration, recognised the driver.  It was old lady Flavia Aquila, known to all the neighbourhood of Noviomagus Reginorum as Cottia, and very probably also the single nosiest old woman in the entire province.   No doubt she had come in to town for the market, and the chance to poke her nose into anything that might be going on.

 Unfortunately,  she was a Roman citizen, and a moderately well off one too. One must be polite to the influential ladies of the district. Longus greeted her.

 “Has someone died, Longus?” she asked him immediately.  “None of our friends in the town, I hope?”   She handed the reins to her companion, a youth Longus didn’t recognise.  Then she hopped down from the benna with surprising agility for a woman of her considerable age, and trotted over to have a good look. No dignity at all, Longus thought disapprovingly, and wished he’d thought to have the body wrapped in something to avoid encounters of this kind.

 “Centurion Crispus.  I don’t think you would have met him,” he said sternly, hoping it was true.  Surely she couldn’t have met the man already.

 “Oh, the new Centurion that was sent by this new Emperor Severus?  Such a pity.  I was hoping to meet him today. I’ve been hearing all about him from every quarter.”

 “He’d only been in town a week!”

 “You know how gossip runs about the place, Longus. Faster than a galloping horse, my husband’s uncle used to say.  What on earth has happened to the poor man?”  

 “He got a knock on the head,”  Longus told her repressively, looking ahead to see if they could move on.  Unfortunately, Cottia had stopped the benna right across the entrance to the Street of the Lion.

 “Really?” she leaned forward, looking interested.  “Not _drunk_ , I hope?”

 “Of course not,” snapped Optio Bellinus, at once. “Centurion Crispus was a very hard-working and serious man.  He certainly wasn’t drunk!   He was attacked!”

 “Oh no!,” Cottia said, innocently, “Who do you think would do such a terrible thing?  ”

 Longus coughed meaningfully, but Bellinus, concerned for his commander’s reputation, would not to be stopped.  “Enemies of the Emperor,” he said grimly. “Supporters of the treasonous Albinus,  hoping to prevent Crispus from finding them out and reporting them.”   

 There was a terrible empty pause which, to Longus, felt as though it would go on forever.  He could not think what to say, and yet somehow, everyone was looking at him.  If only he had had the sense to feign a convenient ailment to get out of that unwise dinner!    But then, nobody could have known a year ago that Albinus’s bid to become emperor would fail so disastrously.

 “Goodness, how terrible,” Cottia said at last.  “ And you are Centurion...”  

 “Optio,” said Bellinus, “Optio Bellinus.  Crispus’s assistant.”

 “I’m delighted to meet you, Optio. I’m only sorry that it is under such sad circumstances.  I’m sure that you and our fine magistrate Longus here will very soon find the culprits.   My name is Flavia Aquila, but most people around here call me Cottia.   I do hope you’ll let me know if I can assist in your enquiries in any way.  I’m sure I speak for the local community when I say we will do everything we can to help.”

 Bellinus thanked her.   Apparently this sort of gushing was just the right way to handle Optio Bellinus.  He looked a good deal more cheerful than he had done since Longus had first met him.  Perhaps the Flavia Aquila female had her uses after all.

 “If you could just move the carriage a little..?” Longus said.

 “Oh, I’m so sorry!  Were you heading down to the Street of the Lion?  We’ve left it right in the way, silly us.  Felix!  Could you give me a hand up?”  She turned back to them “My grandson’s friend, Felix.  He’s staying with us on the farm for a while.  Marvellous head for figures, he has.  Felix, this is Magistrate Longus, who I mentioned, and Centurion... no, Optio Bellinus.  We really shouldn’t hold them up any more though.”  

 And with that she pulled herself back onto the driver’s step, and urged the pony forward again.  

 ***

As the benna rolled forward, Cottia turned to her companion, her old eyes alight with mischief.  “I told you he wouldn’t recognise you.”

 “What if he had though?” Placidus replied in a nervous whisper.  “I’ve been to dinner with him! The governor was there!”

 “Oh, he has terrible eyesight. Always has, from a young man: I doubt he can even recognise his own wife at a distance, though they’ve been married twenty years and still very much in love, by all accounts.

 “If you must  tell a lie, always make it a big one.  Sit up and look confident, do!  If you hide away in the hills, everyone will be quite sure you’re up to something and word will be all around the neighbourhood before milking-time.  Coming into town for market and being introduced to all the right people is what any respectable guest would do: therefore, it is what we shall do. ”

 “Very well,” Placidus said, and straightened his shoulders with something of an effort.

 “It’s not as if you were much known in the town before, after all.  Far too grand.  I’m surprised you even recognised Longus.”  Cottia’s face was wickedly amused.

 “Father used to say it’s important to remember faces, even of unimportant people,” he said, drearily.    “He used to take me to the Forum and make me name as many people as I could, when I was small... I hope nobody here makes a habit of doing anything similar.”

 “Hmph.” Cottia replied, as the pony walked into the yard of the livery stables. “Poor old Longus was far too busy worrying that I’d mention that dinner with poor Governor Albinus to the little Optio. I doubt he even noticed you were there.   He must have boasted to everyone in the town about that dinner at least three times each.  Now he doesn’t know what to do with himself.  Poor man, he’s lost weight.  He must be worrying.  Perhaps I should get Andecara to send him a cheese.”

 Placidus was startled into a laugh. “Does nobody around here have any secrets that are really private?”  

 “Me.” said Cottia, waving to one of the stable-slaves.  He clearly recognised her, lifting a hand in salute before coming over to take the horse’s head.

 “Thanks, Sulio.  He can have a little grain, but not too much mind!” She rubbed the pony’s shoulder affectionately.  “He’s enough of a round little lump already.  I’ll be back for him later as usual.  How are the children?”

 Sometime later, after they had discussed the health of Sulio’s three children, the state of the livery yard business, the sad death of Centurion Crispus, and the difficulty of finding hay for the right price, they left the livery yard on foot.

 Cottia’s social smile faded as they walked out into the street. “The death of this Crispus is very bad news,”  she said quietly,  and gave him a long sideways look from those disconcerting yellow eyes.   “Do you know who killed him?”

 “Me?” Placidus was taken aback. “Of course not! How would I know?  I barely know Noviomagus Reginorum.”

 “And yet, the town is only a mile or so from your old home in the Domus Picta, and you were worried you would be recognised,.” Cottia said, coolly,  as she made her way slowly along the street towards the forum, walking stick in hand.  She was considerably shorter than Placidus, and he had to bend awkwardly sideways to hear her over the sound of feet and the rattling wheels of passing handcarts.  At least this must disguise his limp, he thought.  He had no difficulty keeping to Cottia’s slow pace.

 “Suspicion is bound to fall on the supporters of our late governor,” she added.  “I thought you, of all people, would surely know who was most likely to resort to violence.”

 Placidus shrugged helplessly, embarrassed. Why didn’t he know?  He felt that somehow he should have a name to suggest.   His father would have done.   “Up to three months ago, everyone in this town was a loyal supporter of Clodius Albinus.  Or that’s what they all said, anyway...”

 “Sh,”  said Cottia imperiously.  “Try not to use the name.  People pick names out of conversations, even if they can’t hear the rest and then their ears start waggling. ”

 “Oh,” said Placidus, feeling even more foolish. “But I can’t see why anyone should attack the Centurion now.  It’s all over. Alb...  They lost, they’re all dead.  There’s no point being on... his side any more.”

 “And no doubt everyone, like Longus there, will be terribly keen to endear themselves to the new regime,”  Cottia said, thoughtfully. “But perhaps there is someone who won’t find that easy.  A known supporter.  A relative, perhaps with nothing to lose.”

 Placidus’s stomach felt as though it was full of stone. If Cottia believed that he had broken her trust...  “I was at your farm last night. You know I was.”  

 “Of course you were.  And even if you weren’t,  I can’t see you hiding in a doorway and whacking a seasoned soldier over the back of the head.  If it was you, you’d hire someone.”

 “What kind of idiot would take that sort of risk for money?” Placidus said, incredulous.

 Cottia laughed. “There are a lot of idiots about! Hungry idiots, some of them.  Let us assume, however, that you did not hire one.”

 “If I’m caught, everyone will assume that I did.” Placidus said in a low voice.

 “Which is why it would be safest to find out who did kill him, as soon as possible.  That way nobody will be so interested in you, and we will all be a good deal safer.”

 They had arrived at the forum, which by now was full of carts and stalls  set up for market day.  It was a bright day, and the open paved courtyard was busy with people chatting, shopping and enjoying themselves.  

 The shops all around around the edges of the square had set out stands full of pots and plates,  cut flowers,  bright cloth,  dyed leather, shoes and lamps to attract the passing trade.  Many of the carts had roughly-painted signs upon their leather awnings, depicting their wares.  The noise level was raised by a small group of geese cackling in one corner.   From time to time they were interrupted by a loud melancholy bleat from a goat being held on a string by a small boy.

 All in all, it was quite a busy display for a small provincial town, although nobody could call it sophisticated.  Placidus was almost impressed.

 “Our cart should be here somewhere.  Oh, there they are, right in front of the basilica.  A good spot.  Well done, Cara.”    Andecara, wearing an apron, waved at them with one hand through the crowd.  Her other hand was wielding a large knife, with which she was slicing a large cloth-wrapped cheese for a short stout red-faced man in an expensive-looking tunic.

 “Ah, Briginus!” Cottia greeted him.  “How are things at the baths?”

 Briginus jumped.  “Oh, it’s you, Lady Cottia” he said, and made a respectful little bow.  “Very quiet, very quiet.” he said mournfully.  “Do you know, another of our citizens here in town has had a private baths installed in their house?  We’ll have nobody respectable left at this rate!”

 “Oh, Ventinus has finally got his bath finished?  I heard he was planning it.  He must be doing terribly well out of his sardine boats.  But I’m sure he will still be popping into the Thermae for a chat.”

 “Hmph,” said Briginus gloomily, receiving his cheese.

 “Briginus, among his many responsibilities, is the manager of the baths here, on behalf of the town council.” Cottia explained to Placidus, and introduced him, as Felix of course.

 There were a number of other important residents of the town shopping around the forum, and Cottia knew all of them.  Placidus noted with private amusement that most of them looked guilty when Cottia hailed them.  Clearly he was not the only person to find her conversation disconcerting, although he assumed that most of the others must have less lethal secrets to hide.

 Cottia began a long conversation with another elderly lady.  Placidus looked around.  Andecara, Hunno and another of the farm men were busy with customers.  He looked at them, feeling bored and a little useless, wondering if the right thing to do would be to volunteer to help in some way.  It all seemed a long way from anything he knew.

 Andecara caught his eye.  “Here. Fill this basket with onions.  Good ones, mind!  It’s for Magistrate Longus’s household. One of his slaves will be along to pick it up in a bit.”

 Placidus wondered exactly what made an onion a good one.  Size, probably, and perhaps a regular shape? Usually he had encountered onions only after they were cooked.   He rummaged through the sacks on the back of the cart,  and found a selection of firm, good sized onions, which he stacked in the basket.  He showed the results to Andecara.  

“Just a couple more to top it up... perfect. Pop it on the cart-tail there out of the way.”  

 She gave him a warm smile, and Placidus was torn between a sense of pride that seemed ridiculous even to himself, and embarrassment at the menial nature of the job.  On consideration, that seemed even more ridiculous.  If Centurion Crispus had found him, there would be no more onions to eat or pack into baskets.   And after all, Andecara was slicing cheese, so there was really no harm in helping her sort out the onions.

 “Cottia said she would like to send him some cheese. Longus, I mean. She thought he was looking thin,” he remembered.   

 “Really?  Cheese?  All right then!” And she cut a long white half-moon of cheese, wrapped it in the woven straw matting that they used to keep the cheeses clean and added it to the basket of onions.

 Cottia tapped him on the arm.  “If Andecara can spare you for a little while, I’d be grateful if you could come with me down South Street a little way.  I have a mind to call in on a friend.”

 “Of course,” Placidus agreed, wondering who the friend was. Yet another minor local dignitary, presumably.  He had had no idea that there could be so many of them.  Still, they all dutifully paid their taxes, no doubt, and so the great Empire rolled on and prospered.  

 Absurd, bustling magistrates and fishing-boat owners and traders in shoe-leather and olives, working and shopping and selling.  It did not matter to them one bit, whether  the man that ruled Rome was an Italian consular like Pescennius Niger, an aristocratic African like Albinus, or the son of a freedman, like Pertinax.  Or a bloody-handed dictator, like Severus, come to that.   Nobody here would care that Severus had massacred half the Senate to ensure that the rest would be too frightened to challenge his authority.

 Half way down South Street, Cottia dropped her stick into the gutter.  “Oh dear, my clumsy fingers!’ she exclaimed loudly, “Felix, could you...”  

 Placidus lent down, but the stick had rolled sideways under a step.  Resigned, he got down on his knees.  Fortunately the road was clean after the rain the previous night.

 “Have a good look around,” Cottia told him quietly.  “This is the spot where the body was found, if Sulio has it right. Just here, next to these steps.  Can you see any blood on the stones?”

Placidus peered at the gutter.  There was no sign of blood on the stones of the roas, but now he looked more carefully, he could see a faint smear of some brown substance at the edge of the gutter.  He pointed at it without speaking.  

 “Looks like he fell sideways.  He would have been walking North along the  road, Cottia said, thoughtfully.  “Odd that he was so close to the houses. You’d think he’d walk in the middle at that time of night, an important man like him.”

 “Someone spoke to him from this doorway?”

 “Perhaps... This door goes into a yard, doesn’t it?”

 Placidus pushed at the unpainted wood, but the door did not move.  “Bolted from the inside?”  he speculated.

 “Hm, very likely. ”  Cottia said absently.  She was looking up at the wall, a shabby wall of small yellowish local bricks, scarred with names and random scribbles. But there was an area of fresh paint near the door, a rough-edged patch of white, entirely free of marks and letters.  

 “Can you make out what it said before it was painted over?” she asked Placidus, squinting at it.

 Placidus stepped back a few feet to look at the pale strip from a better angle.  “Someone is an... executioner?   No...” he ducked to get the sun out of his eyes, and tried squinting at the white patch.  The letters that had been covered in paint had been large and clear : it was still possible to make out the outlines of the letters, even under the paint.   “An .. extortioner, I think.   I can’t read the name.  B-something, I think.”  He straightened. “Does it matter?  It’s only graffiti.”

 “Someone took the trouble to have it painted over, and recently too.   This whole wall is covered in scrawls, and yet this big white patch doesn’t have so much as an advertisement for garum or a message celebrating what I understand to be the legendary sexual prowess of Biccus the carter.  Surely it must have been painted only this morning.  I wonder why?”

 “B-someone is an extortioner.” Placidus said it again, thinking about the problem..  “Presumably not Biccus!  It looks like a longer name. Who does this wall belong to?  If it’s been painted, surely the owner of the place has ordered it.”

 “Or his manager, or some slave anxious to avoid angering him.  But it’s a place to start.  Let’s ask Sulio. He’ll know, or know someone who does.”

 They walked slowly back towards the forum. The street was quiet now in the morning sunshine that flooded in through the Southgate.  The carts going to market had all arrived, and nobody was leaving yet.

 The town seemed a pleasant enough place, not sophisticated, perhaps, but peaceful.  It did not seem the kind of place where a representative of the Emperor himself should be at any threat of violence.   Even a new Emperor, rooting out remnants of the old order...

 You heard things, of course.  Escaped slaves.  Angry, rebellious tribesmen.  Attacks on the proper order of things.  

 “You don’t think he was killed as part of some sort of tribal rising?”  he asked Cottia, wondering. “The start of some attack to destabilise the province while the new Emperor has not yet established his control, perhaps?”

 Cottia snorted. “You’ve met the local Regni. Most of the people you saw this morning wearing their best Roman tunics for market day were born to that tribe.   Their idea of a tribal rising is to underpay their taxes and get away with it.  They’re traders, not fighters.”

 “But Britannia is unstable.” Placidus argued. “That’s why there were so many legions here... before the old governor took them all off.  This could be someone taking advantage of the legions all going off to Gaul, before the new Emperor moves many troops back to the island.”

 Cottia paused and leaned on her stick, considering. “If we were in the North, perhaps.  I’m told the Painted People never give up. And the Brigantes can be awkward buggers, and they still remember their glory days.”

 “My father said that,” Placidus agreed.  “That’s why he arranged for me to live here, at the Domus Picta, rather than with him in Eburacum.”

 “Didn’t want his son growing up surrounded by tattoos and moustaches, eh?” Cottia chuckled.   “It’s a bit like that among my own people, the Iceni, too.  Plenty of grudges still being cherished. They don’t forget the days when we were powerful and free... But the Regni have always traded across the water, and Rome has been with them for a very long time.   Crispus must have felt safe, or he wouldn’t have been walking through the town after dark on his own.  I doubt any Roman does that in Venta Icenorum, even today. “

 She set off slowly around the corner, her stick crunching on the gravel, back towards the stableyard.   “I suppose it’s possible that our Crispus met an angry drunk, but I do hope not.”

 “Why not? It would at least make sense.”

 “Yes, but if someone simply bumped the good Centurion over the head after too much beer because he didn’t like his face or his accent,  very likely we’ll never get to the bottom of it.  That will probably mean people will start looking for you, my lad, with rather more enthusiasm than they have done to date,”  She grinned at him, that disconcerting fox-grin.  “Anyway, that explanation is no fun.  There’s no challenge to it. ”  

 The livery-stable manager, despite being interrupted taking his mid-morning break with a cup of wine in the pleasant little garden behind the stables, was delighted to help.  

 “That wall down near the Southgate?  Door desperately needs a coat of paint?   That’s the back entrance to Briginus’s brickworks.”

 “Briginus... that’s the man who manages the bathhouse?” Placidus asked.

 “That’s him, the very man!   You’d know it if you saw the main entrance, over on New Lane: they have a sign up and stacks of bricks everywhere.  Mucky old place, it is.   They used to bring the clay and straw up through the Southgate and unload down by that door.”

 “Oh, so they did!” Cottia remembered. “And they weren’t careful about it either.  Red mud everywhere.”

 “Just so!  So when Briginus bought the place, oh, must have been fifteen years ago now, and wanted to expand, the city council made a fuss.  About the mess, you see.  So they made a new entrance on the other side and started bringing supplies in through Westgate instead. ”

 “But the brickworks is still just the other side of the wall.” Cottia said.  “I confess, I assumed it had closed.  Thank you, Sulio.  It’s remarkable how one fails to wonder about things until one has a guest to ask questions.”

 “I should get back to work,” Sulio excused himself.   “ But perhaps you would like to take a cup of small ale here in the garden, Mrs Cottia?   It’s a fair drive down from the farm and they won’t be done in the market for a while yet. It’s a lovely morning: I’ll send the girl out to you. ”

 “Oh, how kind,” Cottia said, taking a seat in the sunshine on the wooden chair that  Sulio pulled out for her.  “Felix, I fear I’m a little tired, perhaps we could take a brief rest.”

 Placidus looked at the old lady in some concern,  remembering her age, but she did not appear unwell.  In fact as Sulio left the garden, she leaned forward, her eyes narrowing.

 “Briginus’s brickworks.  I wonder if those are the same brickworks from which our own Sualina was so abruptly turned away.  I did not think him so callous.  ”

 “That signature on her manumission could have said Briginus.  Or anything, really.  It was just a squiggle... Have you known him long?”

 “All his life, on and off.”  She frowned.  “But I cannot say I know him well.  He’s an influential man, fingers in a lot of pies, and perhaps not as honest as he might be.  He’s on the council, and he takes bribes. Well, they all do, of course,  but Briginus is, I think, more for sale than some of them.  But I would not have thought him a murderer.”

 “Who would you think would be a murderer?” Placidus was simply curious, but the old lady laughed and nodded, as if acknowledging a point well made.  

 “It’s hard to see anyone as a killer until you know for sure, I suppose.  We’ll ask Sualina.  Presumably she knows him.  To turn out an old slave with nothing... it suggests he is less careful of his reputation than I thought.   If he could do that, perhaps he’s capable of other things too.  But if he was involved, in Crispus’s death he’d need a cold hard business reason. I am wondering what that reason could be. ”

 “Briginus is an extortioner, it said. ” Placidus said, thoughtfully.   “An extortioner. It seems oddly specific, for graffiti.”

 “And unusually chaste.   Who would be most likely to complain about extortion, I wonder? “

 “Perhaps the people who are least able to escape it through influence or bribery?  The poor, I suppose. “

 “Not much to be extorted from them though,” Cottia frowned.  “But there are other people who might have money, and would have no option but to pay up.  People with secrets...”

 “But that takes us back to supporters of the old Governor again!” Placidus said, alarmed.  

 “Perhaps.  But nobody has hit Briginus over the back of the head. It is only that someone who has taken out their frustration by slightly defacing his wall might also be someone who knows something...   Graffiti is hardly a major crime, particularly for one  who is already guilty of treason.”

 “I’ll bear that in mind,” Placidus told her drily.

 “You know, I think it might be a good idea for me to have another chat with that delightful young Optio,” Cottia said thoughtfully.  “No, it’s all right, I don’t mean to take you along.  That would be asking for trouble.   But  I think we need to know a little more about what Crispus was doing here.”

 “What should I do?”

 I think... you had best go back to Cara.  The market will be over soon, you can go back to the farm with the cart and talk to Sualina.  Or...  Actually, I will go with you as far as the forum..  The Street of the Lion is in that direction.  And a young guest with his elderly hostess is not something that anyone is looking for.”

 “Good point.” Placidus said.  He was beginning to feel very uncomfortable in the town,  as though the walls were closing in on him, the windows watching.  He suddenly felt an urgent longing to get back to the small farm in its quiet fold in the hills.  It was primitive, but at least it was a place where you could see people coming from a good distance.  Nobody would surprise you there.   And there was a peace to the place, somehow.

 


	4. Bricks, Bribes and Doubts

 

He felt even happier about returning to the farm by the time he got there.  The farm cart was not as well sprung as Cottia’s light wickerwork carriage, and it creaked and groaned and jolted as the oxen stumped along slowly ahead of it, and he wished several times on the interminable journey  that he had brought his own horse.

 Sualina was, in theory, cleaning out the chickens.  Or at least, she was looking at the chickens and leaning on a broom.  Placidus got straight to the point.

 “Was your old owner a man called Briginus?  I’m told he owns the brickworks at Noviomagus Reginorum.”

 Sualina looked at him suspiciously.  “Briginus.  Yes.  That was his name.”

 Placidus tried to think how to word his next question so as not to give anything away.  He did not trust the old freedwoman at all.   “Why would someone write ‘Briginus is an extortioner’ on the wall outside the brickworks?”  

 “It wasn’t me,” she said, automatically.

 “No, I understand that.  But someone -- not you, of course, you were here all the time -- someone wrote that.  Do you know what they meant?”

 “They wanted to be rude about him,” Sualina told him, unhelpfully.  She made a token gesture with the broom, moving straw about.

 Placidus took a deep breath and summoned his patience.  “Yes. But who would want to be rude about him?  And why accuse him of extortion, rather than, oh, I don’t know,  being a blockhead or a criminal or unnaturally interested in Biccus’s private parts?”    

 “That one isn’t interested in nobody’s private parts” Sualina said, sniffing contemptuously.  “He only cares about cash.  He’ll squeeze anyone he thinks can pay him off. ”

 “Such as?”

 “Well, there was old man Virucius, used to own the brickworks.   Briginus bullied him until he got the place for practically nothing.   And he used to get the straw dirt cheap, somehow.  I don’t know what he had on the farmers, but he used to get it for half the price other people did.   And fuel for the the furnaces!   I don’t know how he did it but he changed all the arrangements we had, and I heard he did the same at the baths once he started managing those....”

 Apparently asking for gossip about her old master was the key to getting the normally sullen Sualina to show some animation at last.  

 “You know how many brickworks there used to be in Noviomagus Reginorum?”  she asked, her pale eyes brightening with gossip and malice.  Placidus shook his head and raised his eyebrows.

 “Three!  Three brickworks, there used to be, inside the walls, and two more outside.   There’s only the one now, so everyone has to buy from Briginus.  Yet they  put the prices of bricks up, once the others were out of business, for all they were paying next to nothing for the fuel and straw.  And as to how he got the position running the bath-house....  Well, I don’t know nothing for sure...”  She said, looking belatedly cautious again, and scuffling with the broom.

 “But you heard something?”  Placidus prompted her.

 “He put the word out.  About the other men.  It was cheaper than paying for games or entertainments.   Nobody wanted them appointed after that.” she said, leaving Placidus wondering what on earth ‘That’ was and how it was that everyone apart from him appeared to know this sort of thing.    

 “This is all very useful, Sualina,” he said encouragingly.  “Are there any citizens you can think of who might be prepared to bear witness?”  The testimony of a slave was not much use, even if she had said anything that could be definitely proved one way or another.   But the mention of the word ‘witness’ had dried up Sualina’s willingness to speak.  She was looking at him sideways through lowered lids again, her glum face closed and unreadable.    She muttered something inaudible, and began brushing the straw into piles.  He cursed himself for the misstep, and wondered how long it would be before the old lady got back with news of what the Optio had had to say.

 But as he turned to leave the barn, giving her up as a lost cause, the old slave  grabbed him by the forearm.   Startled, he turned back towards her and she flinched, but did not let go.

 “I thought of a proof,” she said hissing under her breath, as if the walls were listening.  Her thin grey hair fell over her face and she looked more than a little mad, but there was a strange energy to her thin, toothless face.  “The stamps.   Look at the brickstamps.  He’s still got them.   He took them, and he had them used, on the new bricks. “

 “What?”  Placidus began to see.  “You mean, he had the brickstamps from the brickworks that closed?   But how...”

 Sualina looked straight into his eyes, a fixed stare,  “Because if it’s got another man’s stamp on it, it’s not his fault, is it?  If a wall falls, if a house comes down... He won’t have to pay.”  She was almost breathing it under her breath and he had to lean forward to hear her.  Her breath smelt rank.

 “Oh!  He made more bricks with the old brickstamps, so he could... what?  Sell shoddy bricks and not have the blame come back to him if they were faulty?”

 “Something like that,” Sualina said and the animation was gone from her face again.  She shuffled away.

 A thin spring wind crept cold around his ankles in the blue shadow of the long low farmhouse building, although the last of the sunlight still gilded the red tiles on the roof.

 

***

 

The farm-hands had gone off to their own places in the small houses behind the main farmhouse, and Vinna the dairy-maid had gathered up the supper-dishes.   Cottia, Andecara and Placidus were sitting in the small atrium, the white walls blushed pink with the firelight from the raised British fireplace.

 “But it makes no sense,” he told them, having recounted the gist of what Sualina had told him.

“Noviomagus Reginorum is hardly a great city – not like Rome, where there are new buildings put up every day. Everyone seems to know everyone, and after all, there is only one brickworks. If someone buys bricks with the wrong stamp, wouldn't they notice?”

 “They would now,” Andecara said thoughtfully. “But what about when the other brickworks had only just closed down?”

 “Hmmm.   I don’t think I could tell you when the other brickworks closed,” Cottia agreed.  “I remember them, but... I wonder. If, say Senecio's bakery collapsed, that was built… perhaps fifteen years ago, Cara?”

 “Something like that” her great grand-daughter agreed “I can remember them building it.”

 “But I wonder if even Senecio could tell you precisely when.” Cottia said. “If it had brickstamps from one of the old works on the bricks, I don't suppose anyone would think to check exactly when the place was built. If the brickstamp says who made the brick, who would argue? Briginus could probably get away with pretending he was selling off old stock for a couple of years at least.”

 “It’s sharp practice, at least then,” Placidus observed.  “But hard to prove, and if the bakery has stood for fifteen years, clearly the bricks were not made to crumble at the first rain.” He took a sip of spiced ale, warm from the fireplace, from his horn cup. Drunk like this, the murky stuff was really quite passable.

 “The Optio said a number of dutiful and respectful things, when I asked him about Crispus.”  Cottia told them.   “ And he knew Briginus’s name, although he would not tell me why.  I could see it in his face. That Optio has only been in the town a few days. Why else would he know something about Briginus that could not be told publicly?    But when he was talking about Crispus, there was one thing that stood out.  He said that Centurion Crispus refused to take bribes, and would not allow his men to do so either. ”

 “Is that so surprising? Surely a man in his position would be chosen for his honesty?” Andecara asked.

 Cottia laughed. “Honest men are hard to find. Honest men who are loyal to a new Emperor in a hurry, who can be trusted with authority... I don't think so, Cara. I wonder how many such men our new Emperor Severus could possibly have.”

 “Not many.” Placidus said. “My father… I'm fairly sure my father would have expected someone like Crispus to take his cut. It's practically calculated into the pay scales. I think… I'm almost sure that as long as he didn't allow seriously dangerous men to pay their way out of trouble his commanders would see little harm in letting those blessed by fortune pay a little extra to avoid inconvenience. How strange that he chose not to do so. Didn't the Optio mind?”

 “I think it impressed him,” Cottia said. “He seemed genuinely sad at his commander's death, even though, no doubt, his new commander will have no such reservations and the Optio will be better off in consequence. It seems that Briginus is a man for bribes, as I had thought - so we have some confirmation of Sualina’s report. If Crispus would not take a bribe, nor allow his men to take one...”

 “Then perhaps he would not approve of Briginus doing so either!” Andecara exclaimed.

 “You think that Briginus was taking bribes from supporters of the old Governor, to not report them to the new authorities?” Placidus could feel his voice shrill with indignation, and had to make an effort to speak calmly.

 “I suspect so, “ Cottia said grimly. “And that Crispus found out. If Briginus was doing that, then our friend Longus is surely one of his victims.”

 “Longus? The magistrate?” Placidus was surprised. “But Governor Albinus barely knew the man, did he? My father never mentioned him.  Albinus must have dined with hundreds of these small local politicians during his time in Britain.”

 “Well, that's how it seems to you,” Cottia said, rather tartly. “But I don't think that's how poor Longus sees it. He's afraid, and people who are afraid are easy prey for scum like Briginus.”

 “Even so,” Placidus argued obstinately “I'm sure they barely met.  It was only at a social dinner, the usual dull sort of affair to hear the local grievances and encourage people to set up an altar to Rome in the town. I was there!  It was months and months before Albinus ever raised his standards in revolt. It's not as though Longus had ever taken up arms against the Emperor himself.”

 “Interesting,” Cottia pursed her lips. “ And yet, I would swear Longus is truly afraid. Hmm. I wonder.  Briginus would suggest, perhaps, that he might report Longus's 'involvement' with the old administration?  I think Longus's imagination would do the rest. I thought he was looking thin.”

 “But what can we do?” Andecara said frowning. “Briginus has got away with it -- hasn't he? He's killed Crispus, so nobody can stop him from extorting money from Longus or anyone he likes.”

 “Maybe...” Cottia said slowly, the wrinkles around her amber eyes creasing in thought. “And maybe not. Crispus is dead, but another centurion will soon come to replace him. Killing the emperor's representative is a real crime, whereas, having dinner with a man who was, after all, the legal Governor of the province at the time... It's not as though Longus really has anything to hide, if our friend here,” she waved a thin hand at Placidus “has the right idea of it. Perhaps if we can persuade Longus to act quickly, before the new investigator arrives...”

 “You think Longus could arrest Briginus himself?” Placidus felt hopeful. Then he realised the problem with that idea. “But we have no proof of any of this.”

 “We have no proof.” Cottia said.  “True. But Longus is a different matter. If we have guessed right, then Longus knows first-hand about Briginus's extortions. He may even know for sure that Crispus had tried to stop Briginus demanding money from suspects. What Longus doesn't know is how these things truly look to those in high places. He doesn't know that nothing he has done would be counted as treason.

 “How should he? What do we in the South Downs know about treason against this new Emperor far away? We only see him hunting down the families of traitors, and so we think there are no limits to his vengeance. But now you say it,  I can see that he cannot really want to kill everyone who ever had dinner with the old Governor. There would be nobody left to run the place.”

 “So the problem we have,” Andecara said brightly, “is that although Briginus is the real traitor, and Longus probably knows that, and can do something about it -- Longus thinks he is a traitor too. And the only way we know that he isn't, is because we are all really traitors too. You for being the son of a proper one, and Gran and me for letting you stay here!”

 Cottia made a noise that was half exasperation and half laughter. “Very precisely put, Cara.”

Placidus looked at Andecara cautiously. “I wasn't sure if you knew.” he admitted. “Do you mind?”

 “I thought it was a really stupid idea,” she said candidly. “But nobody says no to Gran when she's made her mind up. And you aren't such an idiot as I was expecting you to be, I'll say that for you. Anyone who can talk four piglets out of Marcia Carvilia AND make up a basket of onions on market day is worth having about the place.”

 “That may be the best compliment I've ever been given,” Placidus said, with mock solemnity, and they laughed.

 “I think we'll have to talk to Longus tomorrow,” Cottia decided. “And… I think you'll have to come along with me, lad, and if worst comes to worst, you’ll have to tell him what you know, and how, and we’ll hope to persuade him to keep it quiet.”

 Andecara made a wordless protesting noise, but her great grandmother held up a hand.

“Yes, I know.   It's a gamble, but it's the only horse left in the race. If someone doesn't get to the bottom of this Crispus murder fast, so there's a culprit and a punishment and a line drawn under the whole thing, then we're going to have the Eagles coming down on the town like a ton of Briginus's finest. And once they start combing the Downs for the killer... Well.  If that happens,  we will all have plenty to worry about.”

 Placidus nodded seriously.   Privately, he resolved that if it came to it, he would give himself up.  He would say...  He would tell them that he had been living rough in the hills without help since he had left his apartment in the Domus Picta.  He could tell them that he’d lived on stolen chickens...

 They wouldn’t believe it, but if he was lucky,  they might not think it was worth looking for the people who had sheltered him.   Maybe.    

 He wondered what it felt like to be strangled.  It took a conscious effort not to touch his throat, but if he did that, Cottia at least would surely know what he was thinking, and she might try to stop him.  It would probably be worse if you knew that you’d taken friends with you, people who had only tried to help.   

 The public strangler would know his business.  It would probably be over quite quickly.

 

 

***

 

Cottia slept a little, restlessly,  then woke to bright moonlight and a face out of the deep past.

 “Esca,” she said, and sighed.  She still felt tired, a deep bone-ache exhaustion.   “Oh Esca.  I got old, somehow.  I don’t know how that happened.  They are so terribly young, poor Andecara and that Felix, too.  Little Flavius is so far away, and what could he do, anyway, even if he were here?”

 She sat up, a little awkwardly and looked at him.  He was leaning against the whitewashed wall beside her bed, where the moon shining through the plum tree outside made a pattern of light and shadow, looking just as he used to do in those later years: long hair tied back, in an old tunic as if he had been working with the horses.   “Have you come to tell me not to take foolish risks, too?”

 The moonlight drained the colour from his face and hair, but she could see the corner of his mouth quirk in a smile.  “What would be the point of that?” he asked.  “You might as well scold a flung spear as Cottia of the Iceni... I’ve come to remind you that you are strong.   Not that you need reminding.”

 “I suppose I must be,” Cottia told him, feeling a little surprised.  “I’m still here, after all. Marcus is gone, and you, and so many others.  And here I still am... ”

 “Here you stand, on your little patch of a farm, spear in hand.” Esca agreed.

 “The Emperor wants him dead, Esca.  A child he’s never met, in a province at the other end of the world. It’s ridiculous.”

 Esca raised his eyebrows.  “A child?  He’s older than you were, when you married Marcus.  He’s older than I was, when I was my father’s charioteer, when we made our last stand against the Eagles.”

 “Older than you, when you were dragged off to be a slave.  Yes, I know.  But that’s no reason for him to die.  You don’t think he should, do you?”

 “What, because his great grandfather told some bitter home truths to Marcus and me, when we were a pair of proud young idiots?  Or because he is a Roman?  No.  Stand and be strong, Cottia.”

 He looked straight at her, and his grey eyes smiled.   “I used to think that we’d lost the power that was in the water flowing and the wind blowing,” he said, lightly, almost as if it didn’t matter.   “I used to think that the straight lines of order that Rome stamped into us with iron would be there forever.  But now I think, perhaps not.  Perhaps not. The grass comes up between the cobbles, and the wind flows over it again.  I think you should hide your Roman boy in the British hills and let him be forgotten, if you can.”

 “Good.  Because that’s what I’m going to do, come Emperor, Eagles and all.” Cottia told him.  “And now I’m going back to sleep.”

 But she didn’t.  She lay in the darkness and watched, as Esca walked away in the moonlight, silent across the fields where the long grass curved in the wind, and Marcus was by his side, and the great dark wolf-shape of Cub padded by his side, and her son and daughters went with them.

 


	5. A homecoming of sorts

Both Cottia and Placidus woke early the next morning, although if they had not slept much, neither of them spoke of it.  It was  a morning of pale blue white-streaked skies, with the dew hanging in heavy shining drops on the grass.  

 On an ordinary day,  Hunno or one of the farm hands would have got Cottia’s fat carriage-pony into his harness, but today, Andecara came out herself to do it. She let Placidus help her, although he got the distinct impression that she checked every strap and buckle after he had fastened it.

 He had decided to ride his own horse rather than travel in the benna.    Somehow it felt right, to ride out on Nini, the horse who had brought him here in the first place.  Just in case he didn’t come back.  

Longus’s house in Noviomagus Reginorum was a prosperous looking place, right next to the temple of Neptune and Minerva.  The fine red and black mosaic patterned with roses in the atrium would not have looked amiss among the fine apartments of the Domus Picta.  

 Longus did not seem eager to see them, for there was a long delay after they had been ushered in by the door-slave.  They waited awkwardly in the atrium. Still, at least they had not been turned away at the door.

 “We have an urgent matter to discuss with you, magistrate” Cottia told Longus when he appeared at last.  “An urgent, extremely private matter.”

 Longus’s thin tired face crumpled sadly, but he led the way to his private study and closed the door behind them.   He did not offer Cottia a chair, so Placidus looked about and found one for her. Longus frowned at him, but did not protest.   Placidus could not see another chair, so he leaned against the wall near the door.                                                                                                                 

 “What is this all about, Flavia Aquila?” Longus asked, settling himself into a chair behind the desk.  He squinted a little as he looked at her, narrowing his weak eyes.

 “I think,” Cottia said, coming brutally to the point, “That someone is demanding money from you to keep quiet about that dinner you went to with the old Governor.  Maybe about other things, too.”

 Longus looked away, guiltily, staring out of the window at the sunlit street outside.  “Whatever would make you think such a thing? ”

 “Because he’s done it to others.  He’s been demanding money with menaces for years, he’s known for it.   And now,  I think he’s gone further,” Cottia said firmly.  “I think Centurion Crispus tried to stop him taking bribes, and Briginus killed him.”

 “What?”  Longus said, incredulous.  “Briginus?  But Briginus is a magistrate!  I can’t believe that.”

 “He has been extorting money from you though, hasn’t he?” Placidus asked him.  “Money not to talk to the investigators about, um, your involvement with Governor Albinus?”

 Longus’s crumpled face fell even further.  “Are you another one?” he asked in a low voice, looking down at the desk.  He had picked up a goose quill and was fiddling with it, pulling the strands of the feather-tip  apart then fussily stroking it back together again.

 “What?  No!  I’m just... look. I really don’t think that Crispus was looking for you.  The Emperor doesn’t want to kill off every official who worked with the old Governor.  It would make the province ungovernable.  I honestly don’t think you have anything to hide.”  

 Cottia was watching Longus intently, as a fox watches a mouse-hole.   “But Briginus has something to hide, doesn’t he?”   she asked him.  “ And you know about it.”

 “I don’t think he did anything that... well, that I didn’t do.   Not much more, anyway.   The odd back-hander here and there, to ease the wheels - well it’s expected.  Everyone does it.  When there are two choices, each as good as one another, well, why not pick the most profitable?  It does no... no great harm, in moderation.”  Longus pulled at the feather a little too hard, and a tuft came away. He laid it neatly on the desk and looked at it sadly.  

 “But Crispus seemed to be very much the old-fashioned military type.  Wouldn’t entertain anything of that sort at all. He... well.  I believe he spoke to Briginus about, well, about a few things that had come up.   I’m sure there was nothing to it.”

 “I’m not.” Cottia said, grimly.  “I think Crispus told Briginus to lay off you, and anyone else who Briginus had bullied into thinking that they might be suspected of treason.   He told him that there must be no more easing the wheels, no more bribes...  Are you really sure Briginus is no more than a little corrupt?  I’ve got one of his old freedwomen up on my farm right now.  He turned her out without a penny, with nowhere to stay,  to tramp the roads.  She almost starved.”

 “What? That’s not... well, that’s a bit off, isn’t it?  Unlucky, that sort of behaviour. ”  Placidus noted that Longus did not appear as appalled by this news as Placidus felt he should have been.

 “She’s fine, by the way,” Cottia told him. “I gave her a job helping with my chickens.”

 “I’m sure the Gods will look favorably upon you for your piety,” Longus said, automatically.  Cottia raised her eyebrows.

 “I certainly hope so,” she said, and her tone was withering.   “Tell us, Longus.  You need to tell us exactly what you know about Briginus.  What did he ask from you? What did he threaten you with?  You asked just now if my young guest here was ‘another one’.  Another extortioner?”

 Longus let out a long, exhausted sigh and nodded. His shoulders sagged.  It was suddenly clear that this was a man who had been laboring under a great weight of worry for quite some time.   He was not a very fluent talker, but it was clearly a relief to him to speak.   He talked for some time about Briginus, his at first veiled, then increasingly clear threats, the money he demanded, the favours required from his fellow-magistrates and businesses within the town.

 “You really think that Briginus may have killed Crispus?” he asked wonderingly.  

 “If not with his own hands, then someone hired by him, or perhaps even one of his slaves.”   Cottia told Longus.  “He died right next to the back entrance to Briginus’s brickworks, after all.”

 “Red Eppilus. That would be the man he’d use, if he had something... unpleasant to deal with.   He’s one of Briginus’s freedmen.  A nasty piece of work, but Briginus keeps him out of trouble.  He works as a debt-collector, mostly, I believe.   There was... an incident recently.  Briginus made it very clear that he’d like me to smooth things over in the town.”

 “He’ll need to be talked to,” Cottia said.

 “Yes, I suppose he will.  And there’s still that other matter. Technically, it’s still outstanding, we can arrest Eppilus on that and probably Briginus too, given the way he behaved...”  Longus scrubbed at his receding hair with both hands.  “I have to admit, I’d love to see him arrested.  Now I think about it, Briginus was supposed to be at the meeting to plan the  Festival of Neptune the night Crispus died,  but he didn’t make it.”

 “I think you should talk to Optio Bellinus, right away,” Cottia said firmly. “You have nothing to fear.  You’ve done nothing wrong.”

 Longus shot her a wry smile.  “If you’re right... then this turns everything around.  If we can just get one of them to admit it, then -- well, Briginus is the traitor after all.  Nothing anyone in the town has done can compare at all with... Well.  really, if killing a Centurion sent by the Emperor himself  in cold blood isn’t treason, then I don’t know what is,” he ended, defiantly.

 “It is most definitely treason,” Placidus told him, and hesitated, then went on firmly. “Whereas all you did was work with people who were the emperor’s representatives at the time.”

 “And you don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”  Longus sighed. “Put like that, it seems obvious.  I’ve been an idiot!”

 “Will you take men with you?” Placidus asked “Briginus has already proved that he’s dangerous.”

 “I’ll take the Optio and his men.   It’s only a small squad, but they’re all seasoned men.  I’ll have to get onto this right away.  If we can sort it all out today, then the new Governor will know right away that Noviomagus Reginorum is a well run sort of town.  There’ll be no need for any... interventions.”

 Longus stood up and made for the door.  Before he left, he glanced back at Placidus.  “I know your voice, don’t I?” he said, clearly caught by a memory.  “I met you.... you’re..” And then his lined face lifted for a moment, and the edge of his mouth quirked.  “Felix, that’s right, of course.  We met yesterday.  For the first time.  Do accept my thanks for your help with this matter.”  

 And he turned quickly and strode out.  They could hear him outside, calling instructions to his slaves as he left the house.

 “Well I never,”  Cottia said, taking a firm grip on her stick, and grinning a wide yellow grin like a vixen with a fat hen.  “Good old Longus.  He does have some gumption in him, after all.”

 Placidus was staring at the door.  “Did he recognise...?”

 Cottia made a face. “Yes, I think he did.  But it appears he has decided not to notice you.”

 “I hope so,” Placidus said, still staring after the departed Longus.

 “Perhaps it would be safest to get you out of the way for a while after all, until the Briginus business is over,” Cottia said, stumping to the door. “Hunno will be taking the horse-herd up into the hills for the summer, very soon.   He could take you with him...”

 Placidus turned to look down at her, his hand on the door. “What happened to ‘If you must  tell a lie, always make it a big one?’  No.  I don’t think I can bear to run again, and be stuck hiding with no idea what’s going on.  And I won’t leave you to answer questions.  I’d rather trust to Longus.  If you’ll have me?”

 Cottia looked at him, head on one side.  “Very well then.  We’ll make our stand there on the farm, if we must make a stand.  I’m too old for running, myself.”

 They made their way across the beautifully-tiled floor towards the door.  The door-slave hurried to open it for them.   

 “Anyway,” Placidus said.  “I’m fairly sure it would drive me mad, Hunno, me and a bunch of horses miles from anyone, in the hills.  Can you imagine?   I wouldn’t have the first idea what to do, and Hunno would probably knock me on the head within a week, out of sheer annoyance.”

 Cottia chuckled at him as she made her way down the steps, cautiously taking one step at a time and thumping the stick down first.

 “I don’t think so,” she said,  “He’s a patient man, is Hunno.”

 “All the same, it feels like... it’s such a long way from the palace to the town.  Not in miles, but... something else.  And further still to the farm.  I can't go any further.  Not yet, anyway”

 “I suppose it is, when you’re starting from Rome,” she said, and she paused and looked at him with those odd golden eyes. “You know, they say, once you’ve slept in the hollow hills, you can never really go home again?”

 “Oh well...I never really had a home before,” Placidus told her, realising it was true, and he took Nini’s bridle and led him to the mounting block.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Clodius Albinus's revolt happened as I have described. The assassination of the unpopular emperor Commodus had precipitated the Year of the Five Emperors in 193. Albinus, originally co-emperor with Severus, was the last competing emperor to oppose Severus by 197, when he was defeated and killed by Severus at Lugdunum. Severus did indeed hunt down his supporters and execute them, and Albinus's children were killed too. 
> 
> Herodian says: "Then the angry emperor took vengeance upon Albinus' friends at Rome. He sent the man's head to the city and ordered that it be displayed. When he reported his victory in dispatches, he added a note stating that he had sent Albinus' head to be put on public view so that the people might know the extent of his anger against them. "
> 
> The Placidus family, so far as I know, were invented by Sutcliff. Young Servius Placidus's minor disabilities are a result of his having survived smallpox as a small child, in the second outbreak of the Antonine Plague in 189, and are the reason that he's hanging about the south of Britain rather than starting the Cursus Honorum, the career path for Roman aristocrats. The Antonine plague, a series of epidemics of what was probably smallpox, repeatedly decimated the population in the second half of the second century. 
> 
> Cottia is aged 83 - very old indeed in this period, though there are records of older people from this period, some of them even slaves. As the owner of what is now a successful farm, as well as the town house in Calleva which was once Uncle Aquila’s, she is well off and would have good food, nursing if she is ill, and hired labour to do most of the hard work.
> 
> In which I make things up.  
> I could find no details of prices for the end of the second century, so the prices for things I've mentioned are a guess based on Diocletian's edict on maximum prices from 305AD. 
> 
> The social structure depicted in this story is a bit odd. Cottia and Andecara seem to have rather a lot of freedom of movement and choice for women of a Roman province, and Sualina appears to be rather more of a manual labourer than one might expect a female slave to be. The farm seems a bit low on workers and a bit empty. 
> 
> My justification for this is the Antonine plague: this must have reduced the population considerably, and was followed by four years of civil war which pulled men out of Britain (all three British legions went with Clodius Albinus to his defeat at Lugdunum.) Plague and war tend to have a major effect on social structure, and when it comes to plagues that we know a lot about later in history, social mobility and women taking non-traditional roles often occurs after these events. I was unable to find much specific evidence for social change in Britain after the Antonine plague, but I think there must have been some, so I made it up. (To be honest, I don't think there's much evidence other than archaeology for Southern Britain in the second century at all, and I have looked.) If you have specific post-Antonine sources that would contradict these ideas, please let me know! 
> 
> My other justification is that even in societies where the role of women as a whole is pretty circumscribed, you often get high-status exceptions that everyone just has to work around. I think Cottia would probably count as one of these in a provincial countryside and town setting where she would be considered quite well off (not rich, like the Placidus's, but at least an influential landowner with useful high-status military connections). 
> 
> The idea that Sualina might have been sent away by her owner as useless is based loosely on an edict of Claudius, where he rules that if an owner abandons a sick slave at a temple on an island in the Tiber, the slave thereby becomes free and has no further obligation to his owner. This suggests that the idea of a slave that is old and feeble being simply dumped is not completely unRoman, although of course this is from the wrong century and a long way from Britain. But I don't think there's any evidence that would prove it never happened. 
> 
> There doesn't seem to be a recorded Latin name for the enormous Roman palace at Fishbourne, so I decided to call it the Domus Picta, on the grounds that the many painted walls and mosaic floors would surely be a striking feature in Britain. The palace was probably originally built for a client king or local governor, but was divided into apartments in the second century: the apartments would surely still be for high-status important individuals, hence Placidus living there.


End file.
